Dinner on the Dunes of the Cape

For the past 11 years I’ve been spending summer vacations on Cape Cod.   It is a truly incredible place.   Laid back, unpretentious, and gorgeous.   The Cape is made up of a fistful of towns each with their own identity.   For us though, the magic of the Cape can be found in the Outer Cape.  Over the years, we’ve curated a list of beach hikes we like to take, oysters and dishes we think about all winter, and sunsets we want to catch.  At the top of the list though is dinner over an open fire on the beach at sunset.  

The National Seashore allows a couple of fire permits a day on each of the beaches of Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown.  It takes a bit of organization and effort but if it doesn’t take a little work is anything really truly worth it?

Depending on whether the plovers have laid their eggs there may be only 2 available for a given date and summer can be competitive.    Three days before we want to have the bonfire my husband and I have a calendar alarm set on our phones for 9am, ready to compete with the busy signal- our competitors after the same permits.  Once we get through and find out our fate we pick our beach.    

When we first started our tradition of dinner and a fire on the beach we kept it simple.   A bottle of wine, some chowder picked up from Macs Market in Eastham, and s’mores ingredients.   But we’ve become bolder and don’t shy away from grilling skewers of sesame crusted bluefin tuna, or summer peppers or even slabs of fish.

We pack our bag with just the essentials, 3 chords of wood, and warm blankets for cooler nights.

While the sun begins to set we dig our pit. Once the fire is going and the sun has fallen behind the horizon the crowds start to slowly thin out and you’re left to enjoy the quiet beach along with the oranges, pinks, and purples of the sky which will make way for a dark sky full of shining stars-and if you’re lucky some falling ones to.